1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an industrial process for enzymatically hydrolizing marine animal biomass, products deriving therefrom, and a method of computer control for the process.
2. Background
In nature there are only a few basic models of terrestrial life; in biology we call them “kingdoms,” and they include: prokaryotes, protests, fungi, plants and animals. The elementary nutrients for cellular growth of life on Earth are amino acids. Every chemical structure in all living organisms (DNA, RNA, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, hormones, vitamins, and the amino acids themselves) are synthesized and broken down by means of enzymes that, in turn, are proteins, constructed from amino acids. For representatives of all the five kingdoms of living organisms, life on Earth essentially is the circulation of amino acids. For example, representatives of the kingdom of plants continuously make contributions of mass doses of amino acids to global amino acid quantities (by way of photosynthesis).
Food is digested in the human body into amino acids, simple sugars and fatty acids. Amino acids are not only food for human beings, they are also a base for the rapid accumulation of biomass of individual species of organisms in any of the five kingdoms of the terrestrial life. Humans can help protect their species against vagaries and catastrophes within any of the kingdoms of living things on Earth by creating a steadily renewable supply of amino acids. Humans can use this resource to benefit a particular kingdom (for the production of meat, for example, or gas, or alcohol, or for the purification of water or air, or for combating the greenhouse effect on Earth.
Currently, abundant, inexpensive sources of mixtures of amino acids are not readily available. Existing commercial and previously patented processes make use of conventional spray dryer and crystallization technologies to produce amino acid in powder form. These technologies suffer from the following disadvantages. They require steam that adds substantial costs of production. They often require the use of special additives to enhance nucleation, which adds to the cost of making a final powder product. The temperature ranges over which they operate cause thermal damage to a significant portion of the final products due to hot spots and poor mixing within the drying chamber.
Another disadvantage of existing production methods is that they typically use only one denaturation step, either acid or alkaline. As a consequence of this approach, much of the amino acid powder that is produced has not been refined or purified to the greatest degree possible.